Page 3 of The Castaway

Harlow:Um, no? Listen, if Leeza is going to come at her, then Mom needs to clap back, which she did.

Athena:Yeah…I guess so.

Harlow:No, there’s no “I guess so” about it. Mom is at that age where women start to not care. She can do and say whatever she wants, and wear crazy things because she’s old. Old people are supposed to be colorful.

Athena:She isn’t even 50, Harlow!

Harlow:Whatever. Leeza deserved it. You know, people who live in glass houses and all that…plus Leeza once dated my boyfriend and I hate her for it.

Athena:Ryan Gosling is not your boyfriend. And I don’t think they really dated—that was just a photo of them together like fifteen years ago.

Harlow:STOP WITH THIS HATEFUL TALK IMMEDIATELY!!! I will not be forced to relive that trauma again.

Athena:Girl. Pull it together. Refocus. We’re talking about MOM.

Harlow:Okay, okay. I’m back on track. So, she put Leeza in her place, and she mentioned her future plans to sell books. What’s the big deal?

Athena:She told the world that she’s opening a bookstore someplace where it never snows in the winter.

Harlow:Uh oh. Pirate Island is about to become the most popular place in the universe.

Athena:It’s called Shipwreck Key.

Harlow:Pirate Island…Shipwreck Key.Same difference. Hey, maybe I should move down there and get into real estate? Or would that be like insider trading?

Athena:I’m not sure…

Harlow:Okay, gotta run. And keep tabs on Mom while you’re down on the pirate island, will you? We can’t have her doing anything crazy while no one is watching.

Athena:No one keeps tabs on Ruby Hudson. You know that.

Harlow:Bet.

Athena laughs at her sister as she holds her phone in one hand, looking out at the busy sidewalk. It’s late winter and painfully chilly in D.C., and people are wearing trench coats with their collars turned up to fend off the rainy afternoon. There are puddles of water in the street and umbrellas dotting the sidewalk.

Athena is headed down to Shipwreck Key with Ruby in a few days to stay with her in the new house that her mother has just purchased, and she’s looking forward to being on the beach and to seeing where her mom is going to be living. It’s a whole different direction that her mother’s life is taking, and Athena is totally supportive of it; shewantsRuby to have a fresh start and to live her life the way she wants to live it. It’s just going to be hard to let her go, and to finally accept that their lives will no longer overlap in Washington. With her father gone for a full year now, her sister living in New York, and her mom moving to Florida, Athena isn’t even sure what’s left for her in D.C., but it’s where her job is, so she needs to make it work. At least for now.

With one quick emoji sent in Harlow’s direction, Athena sets her phone down and picks up her spoon. She has an hour with the book she’s reading before she has to go back and finish that day’s project at the library.

Ruby

Ruby walks through the lower level of her new house. She’s right on the ocean, and the salty air is already seeping into the pores of her soul, filling her with a sense of well-being that she hasn’t known in ages. She opens windows and stops to breathe, closing her eyes, and exhaling at each window before she moves on to open the next one. Since Jack’s death, it’s been something she’s had to do with intention—just pause, let everything go, and breathe.

This house was her first purchase when everything came raining down on her head a year earlier. She’d visited Shipwreck Key once with Jack—for their fifteenth wedding anniversary—and she’d sworn that time as they walked around eating ice cream cones and watching boats come and go that she’d own a house on Shipwreck Key someday. And now she does.

The house itself is a stunner: two stories, right on the water, and with a white railing winding around the home’s wraparound porch. The weathered-looking shingles give the house an upscale Nantucket vibe, but it’s the inside that truly sold the place to Ruby.

Polished hardwood runs throughout the entire downstairs area, with a spectacular living space right at the center that boasts thirty foot ceilings. Couches, chairs, enormous rugs, and lamps in shades of cream, sand, khaki, and brushed denim fill the huge area, and hanging chandeliers, glass coffee tables, and huge windows that reach the ceiling flank a wood-burning fireplace that’s been painted white and has a beautiful painting of a stormy sea hanging above it. The house was obviously decorated by a professional, and when Ruby toured it—her Secret Service agents stationed outside on the wraparound porch like sentries—she’d asked if she could purchase it exactly as it was.

In her experience, money can buy anything, and she wanted this house. So she got it.

“Mom?” Athena calls out, her bare feet padding against the wood floors.

Ruby’s older daughter has come with her to the island while she gets settled in, and having Athena there to bounce ideas off of has been invaluable. Of the two girls, Athena is her wise, patient, listener, while Harlow is everything spectacular that Ruby always wished she herself could be: charmingly unorganized, unfiltered in a way that makes her seem brave, and fearless when it comes to life choices. Since Jack died, Harlow has gotten engaged and broken it off because “the vibe wasn’t right,” she’s gone skydiving, and she’s moved from D.C. to Manhattan to take a job at a marketing firm that even Ruby has to admit she probably got mostly because of her last name.

But Athena has played things closer to the vest. She’s stuck close to her mother, staying in an apartment in Washington that’s just a ten minute walk from Ruby’s condo, and she hasn’t even considered leaving her job or striking out in a new city. As the coverage from the Leeza interview has rolled on and on, spawning memes, jokes, and plenty of debate, it’s been Harlow sending the funny stuff to Ruby with all of the “you go, girl” energy attached to it, but it’s been Athena who talks to her seriously about how Ruby really felt in that moment on the set, with her boundaries being ignored in favor of the potential for Leeza to get a salacious, career-making interview.

“Mom?” Athena says again, walking into the kitchen where Ruby is standing with her hands on the cold marble counter of the island, looking out the giant window that faces the beach.

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